Galapagos
One of those life changing experiences. After visiting the Galapagos Island I will never look at the world the same way again. Neither did Charles Darwin. So much has happened that Darwin could not have known about. What would he think today about the world he created. One divided between two world views that of god and man and nature?
Before there was a Darwin and the Galapagos there was Plato and Time
Time, the Moving Image of Eternity.In his dealing with Time, Plato holds one of his great visions:When the father who had made it saw it set in motion and alive, a shrine brought into being for the everlasting gods, he rejoiced and being well pleased he took thought to make it yet more like its pattern.
So as that pattern is the Living Being that is for ever existent, he sought to make this universe also like it, so far as that might be...Now the nature of that Living Being was eternal, and this character it was impossible to confer in full completeness on the generated thing. But he took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity; an everlasting likeness moving according to number _ that to which we have given the name Time.For there were no days and nights, months and years, before the heavens came into being, but he planned that they should now come to be at the same time that heavens were framed.
All these are parts of Time, and "was" and "shall be" are forms of time that have come to be. We are wrong to transfer them unthinkingly to eternal being..."was" and "shall be" are properly used of Becoming which proceeds in time for they are motions. But that which is for ever in the same state immovably, cannot be becoming older or younger by lapse of time;...the moving things of sense have come into being as forms of time, which images eternity and revolves according to number.- Timaeus 37c-38a.
So as that pattern is the Living Being that is for ever existent, he sought to make this universe also like it, so far as that might be...Now the nature of that Living Being was eternal, and this character it was impossible to confer in full completeness on the generated thing. But he took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity; an everlasting likeness moving according to number _ that to which we have given the name Time.For there were no days and nights, months and years, before the heavens came into being, but he planned that they should now come to be at the same time that heavens were framed.
All these are parts of Time, and "was" and "shall be" are forms of time that have come to be. We are wrong to transfer them unthinkingly to eternal being..."was" and "shall be" are properly used of Becoming which proceeds in time for they are motions. But that which is for ever in the same state immovably, cannot be becoming older or younger by lapse of time;...the moving things of sense have come into being as forms of time, which images eternity and revolves according to number.- Timaeus 37c-38a.
Time is created, not part of Being but of Becoming. Or rather, Becoming and Time are alike imaged. Time images the eternal, in which there is no past or future.In one sense this is very modern. Time is not absolute but secondary and derived. In another sense this is not relativity however, as space in Plato is not here involved with Time. However, if I were allowed to carry his thought on I would say:
1. Space is the receptacle of Becoming. (Plato) 2. Becoming is in Time. (Plato)
1. Space is the receptacle of Becoming. (Plato) 2. Becoming is in Time. (Plato)
3. Hence space is in a sense also the receptacle of Time
posted by Writer in Residence in Cyberspace at
1:31 PM
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